


Ronan Wakes Up

by clare_dragonfly



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Dreams, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mint Leaves, Ronan's Dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 08:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clare_dragonfly/pseuds/clare_dragonfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronan dreams. Gansey is in the forest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ronan Wakes Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ariadnes_string](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/gifts).



> Thanks for the fabulous prompt, ariadnes_string!
> 
> This is set prior to _The Raven Boys_.

Ronan is alone in Monmouth Manufacturing. He walks in and out of each room to check. Not even Noah is here, as though he has never been here. It is dark and Ronan is afraid.

He walks through the rooms again, and then he walks out the front door and instead of going down the stairs he is in the forest, and that is how he knows he is dreaming. He looks around for the girl but instead Gansey is there. He steps between the trees with that smile on his face and Ronan reaches out to touch him, but he moves back.

Ronan follows him through the trees. Gansey is always a step ahead, moving just past the next tree, slipping through the leaves and leaving nothing but rustling behind in his wake. Ronan hurries his steps to catch him, heart hammering, and then there is a tap on his shoulder and he whirls around and there’s Gansey, smiling like he’s won. Ronan reaches out and takes both of Gansey’s hands in his own and thinks, maybe, this time—

—

Ronan woke up in Monmouth Manufacturing and knew immediately that he was not alone. Gansey was out there playing with his miniature Henrietta or looking through his notes; there was no additional Gansey in Ronan’s room. He didn’t think he could have taken Gansey out of the dream anyway. And even if he had, it wouldn’t have been the real Gansey at all.

Would it?

He had to try.

Ronan sat up once the paralysis faded, knowing he wouldn’t be able to sleep again that night, and only then realized that there was something in his hand. He opened it slowly, carefully, and found a single perfect mint leaf. Not even crushed by how tightly he’d been gripping it in his hand. He lifted it slowly, carefully, to his face.

Smelled like Gansey.

He stood up and kicked the covers off and went out into the big main room to see Gansey. He was bent over a cereal-box house, painting tiny fiddly little details. As Ronan walked over to him the only sounds were his feet on the wooden floor and the tiny scratches of Gansey’s paintbrush. But as he came closer he realized there was another sound, the sound of Gansey’s breathing. It didn’t sound right.

“Hey, man,” he said when he reached him. “You don’t sound so good.” He shoved his hands into his pants pockets and then took out the one holding the mint leaf as though he’d just realized he had it. He held out the mint leaf to Gansey.

Gansey looked up, surprised, the light from the streetlights falling at odd angles on his face so that he looked sharp-edged, like a Greek statue, like Ronan. “Thanks,” he said, taking the mint leaf and tucking it into his cheek. His voice sounded scratchy.

Ronan put his hand back in his pocket and leaned against the table, pretending to be bored as he studied Gansey’s meticulous painting. “What building is that?”

“Somebody’s house. I don’t know who lives there.” Gansey blew on the windows he’d just finished painting and turned the cereal box to its other side. He dipped up some more paint and started on the blank blue front of the house.

“You walk past there studying their architecture? People will think you’re a creep.”

Gansey just smiled and shook his head.

—

Ronan is in the forest. He’s chasing Gansey, but neither of them are running. They’re just walking, in and around the trees, Ronan always keeping Gansey in sight but never quite catching up with him.

He could catch up with Gansey if he wanted to. But he doesn’t. Gansey needs to be the one in the lead, and Ronan can—will—happily give that to him.

Just when he feels himself about to wake up, he reaches forward and touches Gansey’s hair.

—

In the morning it was loud. Ronan curled the single golden hair around his fingers before he could do anything else or process the sound. Then he sat up and frowned, because that was coughing. Gansey sounded even worse than he had the night before.

He got up and wandered out of his room, looking for Gansey, who appeared to be sitting at his desk but not looking at any of his papers. He was hunched over, arm over his mouth as though he could muffle the sound. Noah was standing by looking frightened and concerned and wavery.

“What’s all the racket?” Ronan asked as he walked up. “You need a doctor, Gansey.”

Gansey shook his head and waved him off. “I’ll be fine. Just a cough.”

“You’re going to cough your lungs out at this rate. Don’t trust in your Glendower to save you again.”

Gansey gave him a lopsided grin that made Ronan’s heart twist. “I died once. I’m not going to die again.”

“That’s not true,” said Noah, his voice low and whispery. “You can always die another time.”

“I’ll drive you to the doctor,” said Ronan. “Gimme the keys to the Pig.”

Gansey coughed once, a short, wet hack. “Not a chance. You want to take me to the doctor, you can carry me out and put me in your own car.”

Ronan sighed and touched the back of Gansey’s head lightly, as though he could replace the hair he had stolen. It fell, trapped itself in Gansey’s collar, and sat there sparkling into the light until Gansey bent again with another coughing fit.

Ronan went to the kitchen to rummage through their limited supplies and make the most disgusting cup of tea he could manage.

—

Ronan is driving down the road, the BMW behind the Pig, roaring along. The Pig is winning. The Pig would always win. Ronan’s not racing; he’s following, chasing.

Then the road is gone and the cars are gone and it’s just him and Gansey, running through the world.

“You’re not really Gansey,” he says when he catches up.

Gansey grins at him. “But I’m pretty close, aren’t I?”

“You shouldn’t trust him,” says the girl.

Ronan looks at her. “I don’t trust anybody.” But does she mean this dream Gansey or the real Gansey?

Gansey puts his hand in Ronan’s. “Take me with you.”

“Take me with you,” says the girl, but she doesn’t touch Ronan.

Ronan looks between the two of them. Something frightens him about the idea of taking another person out of the dream. He knows he shouldn’t, somehow. The same way he knows he can.

As the dream starts to fall down around him he grips Gansey’s hand anyway, clings to it like a lifeline, but it still slips out of his grasp.

—

When Ronan woke he had hardly slept, because Gansey was hacking away in the next room. He opened his hand to find a sugar cube in it.

Not Gansey, of course. Never Gansey.

He went out. “Are you going to get to the doctor already, you stubborn ass?”

Gansey shook his head. “I’m not getting worse. I’ll get over this cough.”

“You’re not getting any better, either,” said Ronan. He went into the kitchen and made another cup of tea. Maybe today, when it was light out, he would actually go to the store and get the kind of tea that was supposed to be good for your throat. This tea was just black tea and green tea and a few bad-smelling herbs.

He stirred the sugar cube into it.

Gansey took a sip of the tea and started coughing again, sounding like he was choking. Alarmed, Ronan pushed himself up from the table and slapped Gansey hard on the back. Gansey hacked, spat into the trash can, and said hoarsely, “I’m all right. Just got some phlegm.” He took another sip of the tea.

A wave of tingling fear went over Ronan. He was taking pieces away from the Gansey in the dream. What was he doing to the real Gansey? Could he put the pieces back?

“Drink your tea,” said Ronan. “The coughing is keeping me awake.”

—

Ronan finds himself in the forest. The light is golden and warm like Gansey. It’s bright and fearful like Gansey. Ronan focuses on his hands and the sugar cube, then the hair, then the mint leaf appear.

Now where’s Gansey? He’s got to put them back. He walks through the trees and sees no one and nothing but endless forest, though he knows its borders are really just over his shoulder.

“Gansey,” he calls. His voice falls into the spaces between the trees and is muffled by the grasses.

He drops the sugar and the hair and the mint onto the forest floor to allow them to be swallowed up. Then he looks for the road to take him back to Monmouth, but he can’t find it.

—

When Ronan woke it was quiet and he had nothing in his hands.

—

This Gansey is breathing just fine. He has perfectly healthy lungs, as evidenced by the fact that he can still outrun Ronan. They’re running along the road this time, another race without their cars, another race in which Ronan is following Gansey, not trying to get past him.

Gansey keeps laughing and looking back over his shoulder. He won’t let himself get too far ahead of Ronan.

Ronan stops, confused, and Gansey turns around and stops and walks back up to him. He takes Ronan’s hand. “Here,” he says.

Ronan shakes his head. “I can’t take this.” Even though it’s just his hand. It’s never just his hand.

“Take it,” says Gansey, frowning, brows lowering. “Take it away from here.”

Ronan shakes his head and pulls back, but Gansey won’t let his hand go. “Take it,” he repeats, and he’s shouting, “Take it! Take it!”

—

Ronan woke up with an unlabeled tea bag in his hand. He sat up and lifted the tea to his nose. It smelled herbal and unpleasant and harmless. He threw it under his bed where it wouldn’t tempt him, where it couldn’t harm Gansey. Gansey, his Gansey, the real Gansey. It didn’t matter what the dream Gansey said. The girl had told Ronan not to trust him.

Gansey was coughing again, and this time he was actually in his bed, and this time he sounded worse. “You’re coughing yourself hoarse,” said Ronan. “You’re going to tear your throat out if you keep this up.”

Gansey shook his head at him. “Any more tea?”

Ronan went to the kitchen to make it. He steadfastly ignored the teabag from his room. While the water was boiling, Adam arrived, clattering sedately up the stairs. “Someone sick?” he called over the sound of coughing.

“Gansey won’t go to the doctor,” said Ronan, pouring the hot water onto the tea leaves.

“I wouldn’t either,” said Adam, and preceded Ronan into Gansey’s room. When Ronan arrived with the hot tea, this time including nothing at all from his dreams, Adam was looking through Gansey’s room for medicine. “Do you have anything for a cold besides that tea?” he asked Ronan. Ronan gave him a dirty look. “I’m going to see if Noah has anything,” Adam said, and left.

Ronan put the tea down on Gansey’s bedside table, pushing some papers aside in order to do it. “You need to sit up if you’re going to drink this or you’ll choke.”

Gansey pushed himself upright without complaint, though he was flushed and there were bits of dried spit at the edges of his mouth. He reached for the tea and took a careful sip.

“If you don’t go to the doctor, you’re only going to get worse,” Ronan warned him. “I can’t be responsible for you keeping yourself sick.”

Gansey gave a ghastly grin. “Don’t worry, Ronan. No one’s holding you responsible.”

Adam returned, throwing up his hands. “Don’t any of you people keep medicine around? What if you get sick?”

“Apparently, we cough our lungs out and drink crappy tea.” Ronan turned his back on Gansey and crossed his arms.

“The tea helps,” said Gansey, but he spoiled it by coughing.

—

Ronan held the tea bag tightly in his hand when he went to sleep that night. He’d never put anything back into a dream before, but this would be the time to try.

But he didn’t dream. Instead, when he woke, the tea bag had tossed itself onto the floor, the one clear spot in the room, where it sat highlighted by a sliver of moonlight coming in through the window.

Ronan threw it into a drawer and went out for a drive.

—

This time he manages to sleep; this time he makes it to the woods. But this time Gansey isn’t running away, isn’t letting Ronan chase him. He’s just standing there, hands in his pockets, frowning.

“You need to get it away from here,” he says. “You didn’t take it away.”

Ronan shook his head. “I don’t have to listen to you. I don’t trust you.”

Gansey sneers. It’s such a Ronan expression that he takes a step back, startled. “Just because of her? She doesn’t have your best interests at heart, man.”

“And you do?”

The dream-Gansey is suddenly right in front of Ronan, practically touching him, their chests so close that they almost collide when they breathe. And then he _is_ touching Ronan, drawing one finger lightly down the angle of his jaw, and Ronan holds himself still because he doesn’t know whether to pull away or lean into the touch.

This isn’t Gansey, he reminds himself.

—

But when he woke up there was a bracelet of golden hair in his hand, and he could hear the sound of retching from the bathroom. He put the hair in the drawer with the tea.

—

Ronan’s phone rang. “I can’t go to church today, Matthew,” he answered. “Gansey’s sick.”

“Do you want me to call a doctor?”

“No doctors,” whispered Gansey.

Ronan sighed. “No. Thanks. I can deal with it.”

“What are you, his keeper?” Declan had taken Matthew’s phone away.

Ronan closed his eyes briefly. “He needs someone to keep an eye on him.”

“Come to church, Ronan.”

Ronan did not feel like arguing today. He hung up on Declan, then turned his phone off. He looked at Noah, who as usual was hovering uselessly in the doorway instead of helping Ronan clean the bathroom, or at least holding Gansey up so he didn’t drown himself in the toilet bowl. “Can you go to the store? We need something that Gansey can actually keep down.”

Noah shook his head, eyes wide with panic. “Not by myself.”

Ronan groaned. “Then can you stay here with him?”

“I can,” Noah said doubtfully.

“Don’t need a babysitter,” muttered Gansey.

Ronan turned his phone back on. He would just ignore any calls from his brothers. “Call me if he gets worse,” he said to Noah. Gansey reached out to grab Ronan’s leg and stop him, but his hand never made it.

Ronan bought Saltines and ginger ale and, after careful consultation of the boxes, a few different kinds of herbal tea. He tried to sniff them and see if any of them smelled like the one he’d taken out of the dream, but he couldn’t smell anything through the boxes. He got some canned chicken soup, too, even though it was probably bad for you. At least Gansey would be able to eat it.

The girl at the checkout smiled sympathetically at him. “Is your girlfriend sick?”

Ronan glared at her until she looked away.

He drove back as fast as possible and bounded up the stairs. Noah met him at the door, looking pathetic. “He tried to sit up and got vomit all down his front,” he said.

“Why didn’t you _call_ me?” Ronan snarled, and dashed for Gansey.

He got him cleaned up and warmed up and tucked him into bed with a mug of tea and the crackers and soup. Gansey looked white. It made fear curl up in Ronan’s stomach. He truly did not think that Glendower was going to save Gansey a second time.

—

He is in the forest with the dream Gansey, kissing and kissing him. The dream Gansey’s skin feels warm but not flushed with fever, soft and not covered in goosebumps. His lips are hot like the tea and sweet like the tea and spiced like the soup. It feels like shivers running up and down Ronan’s spine and softness in his arms. He tries to let go, to push away, but he can’t.

—

When he woke, the bed was full of mint leaves, spilled out like rose petals in a romance.

He gathered up all the mint leaves and shoved them in the drawer and went to check on Gansey. “You smell like mint,” Gansey said hoarsely. He reached for Ronan and Ronan tried to flinch away, but Gansey only grabbed a mint leaf that must have stuck itself to Ronan’s shirt. Ronan tried to warn him, to tell him not to, but the words stuck in his mouth. What could he say? How could he explain why it might be dangerous? He’d promised his father.

Gansey put the mint leaf in his mouth. “Weird place to keep a leaf,” he said. “But thanks.”

Ronan nodded. “You need anything? More soup? Ginger ale?”

“You don’t have to take care of me,” said Gansey.

Ronan rolled his eyes. “Of course I do. Who else is going to do it? You might not let me take you to the doctor but you can’t stop me from feeding you.”

“One day I’ll get you back,” Gansey promised.

Ronan grinned fiercely at him. “I’ll hold you to that.”

—

Ronan tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. His nose was too full of the smells of mint leaves and strange herbal tea. Every cough from the other room made him twitch. But Gansey didn’t throw up again, and in the morning, he kept down his ginger ale and crackers and chicken soup.

Ronan opened the drawer in his room and looked at the mint leaves and swallowed. It couldn’t be right. Could it?

He took a mint leaf and brought it to Gansey. “You must be addicted to these things,” he said. “They’re the only things keeping you in this world.”

Gansey chewed the mint leaf and smiled at him. “If that’s the price I have to pay…”

His breath washed over Ronan. It was an even better smell than the mint alone, spicy and sweet and _Gansey_. Ronan walked away.

“How is he?” Noah asked.

“I think he’s better,” said Ronan.

“Oh, good,” said Noah with a small, smudged smile.

Gansey coughed again, but Ronan thought it sounded better. Or was that wishful thinking? He wanted to go outside and drive until his head was clear, but he couldn’t leave Gansey alone.

“You should sleep,” said Noah.

Ronan shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. I have to go check on Gansey.” He went back into the room. Gansey was taking deep breaths. “How are you feeling?” Ronan asked.

Gansey smiled at the ceiling. “Fan fucking tastic. I could run a marathon. Just as soon as my lungs go back into my chest.”

“Tea?” said Ronan. Gansey shrugged. Ronan went to make him some. The tea bag in his drawer kept haunting the back of his mind.

—

That afternoon, Gansey slept fitfully, bags under his eyes. Ronan carefully slipped the bracelet of hair from his dream onto Gansey’s wrist and held his breath. Gansey tossed his head once, then lay still, his chest rising and falling steadily. Ronan backed away, making no noise. Gansey needed to sleep.

What would he think when he saw the bracelet? It was his own hair, if anyone’s.

But if he saw it when he woke, he said nothing, and his lungs sounded clearer.

Ronan swore and stomped out of the room. He’d been wrong. He hated being wrong. But at least he could own up to it. In his own mind, at least, because he couldn’t tell anyone about this.

The water was already boiling when he got back to the kitchen with the tea bag. Had he done that? No, Noah must have started it for him when he wasn’t looking. At least Noah was bothering to be helpful now. Ronan found a clean mug (no need to make Gansey marinate in his own germs) and tossed the bag into it. The kettle started boiling the moment he did. When it was steeped, he brought it to Gansey.

Gansey had managed to get himself upright in the bed (or had Noah helped?) and sniffed at the tea as Ronan brought it in. “That one smells different. Nicer.”

“It’s special tea,” said Ronan, thrusting it at him. “Just for you.”

Gansey laughed as he accepted it and took a deep sniff of the steam that didn’t set him coughing. “You’re poisoning me, aren’t you? I wouldn’t die of this flu so now you’ve decided to get rid of me in your own way. You know, you can just leave. I won’t be offended.”

Ronan looked away and listened to Gansey drink the tea. He only coughed once, halfway through it.

Adam arrived as Ronan was heading back to his room. “I brought some aspirin,” he said.

“See if he’ll take it,” Ronan said. “I think he’s improving. But all he wants is tea.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “We’re just lucky he’s incapacitated enough to actually let other people take care of him. If it was you sick, he would have already bundled you into a car and gotten you to a doctor. You realize that, right?”

Ronan realized that he would do anything Gansey told him to do. Gansey just wasn’t the same way. That was all right. It was the way things should be. He said nothing to Adam. Adam went into Gansey’s room and Ronan went into his room and pulled open the drawer again.

The mint leaves should have been wilted by now, or dried, or at least curled around the edges, but they were not. They were as fresh as though they’d been picked that moment, as fresh as when Ronan took them out of his dream. Ronan took a deep breath of the smell and gathered them up, thrusting them into his pockets in handfuls, heedless of bruising them. They probably wouldn’t bruise anyway.

When he got to Gansey’s room Adam had a glass of water in one hand and two aspirin in the other and was patiently holding them out to Gansey. Gansey was not accepting them. “You smell like mint,” he said to Ronan.

Ronan took a mint leaf from his pocket and held it out to Gansey. When Gansey reached for it, Ronan pulled it away and dropped it into the glass of water. Adam laughed.

Gansey rolled his eyes. “I don’t need aspirin. I’m feeling fine. Much better. I haven’t even vomited once since I woke up.”

“Your throat is all torn up,” said Adam. “You haven’t stopped coughing yet. I can tell it hurts to talk. The aspirin will help with that.”

“Take the aspirin, Gansey,” said Ronan.

“Take the aspirin,” said Noah in a small voice from the doorway.

Gansey looked around at all of them, ducked his head as though he’d been caught doing something wrong, and took the aspirin. He drank down the whole glass of water in one gulp, mint leaf and all. “You still smell like mint,” he said to Ronan. “I know it’s not just me.”

Ronan pulled a handful of mint leaves out of his pocket and threw them at Gansey’s face. They didn’t throw very well, but scattered over his chest and lap. One stuck to his shoulder and he picked it up and began to chew. Ronan threw another handful of mint leaves. Adam stared at him.

“Mint is good for the lungs,” he said.

“And the stomach,” said Gansey. “I should’ve doubled my mint consumption when I started to vomit. Thanks, Ronan.”

Ronan walked away, back to his room. There was one mint leaf left in the drawer. He put it on his pillow and went to sleep.

—

He and Gansey are lying down together on the forest floor. Not Gansey, he reminds himself. Dream-Gansey. And they’re just lying there, not touching or anything. Just lying down and looking into each other’s eyes.

“Thanks,” says Gansey.

Ronan shakes his head. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Can you do one last thing for me?”

“No.”

Dream-Gansey reaches out and takes Ronan’s hand. “Take it out of here. Please.”

—

Ronan woke, entirely unwillingly. There was an egg in his hand, white and perfect. It was not cooked. Ronan took it carefully to the kitchen.

He made an omelette and brought it to Gansey. “Think you can handle some real food?”

“I’m starving,” said Gansey, who appeared to have remained in bed solely through the efforts of Adam to intimidate him. Possibly he thought that was funny. “Give it here.”

Ronan watched Gansey eat the entire omelette, one-third dream-egg. Gansey belched and picked up one of the mint leaves from the bed to put it in his mouth. They still hadn’t bruised. “That was perfect. Exactly what I needed. Going to let me up now?” That last to Adam.

“No,” said Adam. “You’re still recovering. You need to rest. Besides, this is probably just a fluke. Nobody recovers from the flu that fast.”

“I do,” said Gansey.

“Gansey does,” said Ronan.

Adam shook his head. “You should try to sleep. Your body will heal.”

“I’m sick of sleeping,” said Gansey, frowning. “I’ve been having these weird fever dreams.”

Ronan held his breath. But Gansey didn’t elaborate.

Adam touched Gansey’s forehead. “It doesn’t feel like you have a fever any more,” he said. “You probably won’t have any weird dreams. But we’ll be right here if you do.”

“I know,” said Gansey, then sighed deeply and lay back down, pulling the sheet up to his chin and closing his eyes resolutely.

Ronan and Adam went out to the main room. Ronan looked at Gansey’s model of Henrietta. Adam went to the window and looked at the mint plant.

“Where did all those mint leaves come from?” he asked. “The plant is still full of leaves and it doesn’t even grow that many at once.”

Ronan didn’t answer, of course. His friends were used to him not answering questions, and this was one of those times when he just couldn’t answer.

Adam waited, and when Ronan didn’t respond, he started a new subject, as he often did. “Noah’s not much use, is he?”

“Hey,” complained Noah from his doorway.

Ronan and Adam both looked at him. They hadn’t noticed him there before. “You haven’t been any help with Gansey,” said Ronan.

“Gansey doesn’t want our help anyway,” said Noah. Ronan and Adam kept looking at him. Noah looked down. “I tried,” he muttered. “I can’t touch things. Not consistently.”

Ronan gave up and went back to Gansey’s room to check on him. He looked like he was sleeping. Ronan wondered whether he should go to sleep too. No, he told himself. Absolutely not. Not if it’s messing with Gansey’s dreams.

—

He’s alone in the forest. Gansey is not there. The girl is not there. “Hello?” he calls. “Gansey?” Because he’s started to expect to see him there, the dream-Gansey, even when he doesn’t want him, even when he told himself not to wish for it.

But right now he’s alone. That’s a good thing, he tells himself. He’s not messing with Gansey’s dreams anymore. Gansey has gotten well. Ronan wonders if he really was messing with Gansey’s dreams, if he was getting into them because Gansey was sick or Gansey was sick because Ronan was getting into his dreams, if it would work with anyone else. He’d rather none of his other friends got sick for him to test it. He wonders if it would even work with Noah. He’s never seen Noah in his dreams, not even normal ones, and he’s seen almost everyone else he knows there.

It doesn’t matter. He wanders around the trees, half hoping to see Gansey, until he wakes.

—

When he woke, there was nothing in his hand.

Gansey was back out in the living room, writing in his notebook, a little frown on his face. He looked up when he heard Ronan’s silent footfalls and grinned at him, pushing some hair out of his face. The bracelet was gone from his wrist, but the fine hair on his arm looked a little more golden in the sunlight.

“Thanks, Ronan,” he said.

Ronan shrugged. “What for?”

“Being a friend.” Gansey gestured for him to come closer. Ronan did, reluctantly.

“You should still be in bed,” he said. “You’re still getting over that flu. You shouldn’t exert yourself.”

“You said it,” said Gansey. “I’m the only person who can recover from a cold that quickly. Come here.” He gestured again.

Ronan took another hesitant step closer. Gansey stood up and met him halfway. He reached out and grabbed the collar of Ronan’s tank top and pulled him in. He kissed him.

Ronan shuddered all over. Gansey’s lips were dry and cool and passionless. But there was love. He reached up to catch Gansey’s face in his hands, but then he realized what he was doing and stepped back, breaking the kiss and Gansey’s grip, shaking his head.

“I never asked for that,” he said.

Gansey shrugged, his smile cheerful and dear and unchanged. “I know. But you deserve it. Thanks.”

Ronan swallowed, resisted touching his lips, and walked away.

—

“Thank you,” says dream-Gansey.

Ronan presses his lips together as though trying to keep the kiss there. “You said that already.”

Gansey shakes his head. “I didn’t. He did.” He reaches for Ronan. Ronan backs away.

“You’re not him,” says Ronan.

Gansey grins, the same grin he gets in real life but with an addition of the quixotic, the fey. “Of course I’m not him,” he says. “And that’s exactly what you want, isn’t it?”

“No,” says Ronan, but the dream-Gansey has closed the space between them without appearing to move, and his hands are in Ronan’s shorn hair, and he’s kissing Ronan. His lips feel the same as the real Gansey’s, dry and cool, but the passion is there instead of the love.

Ronan kisses him back, but this time it’s dream-Gansey who steps away. He looks at Ronan, a little sad, a little puzzled.

“You’re not him,” says Ronan. “But thanks.” He touches his lips. “Thanks for showing me the difference.”

“The difference between what?” says dream-Gansey.

Ronan shakes his head.

“Well, my job is done, I guess,” says dream-Gansey. He fades away. As he does, he changes, his features sharpening and narrowing, his skin browning and hair darkening, his eyes turning dark and bright and sharp, but before Ronan can understand any of the changes he’s vanished.

—

When Ronan woke, there was a dried mint leaf in his hand. It crumbled the moment he moved.


End file.
